Symphonies I to IX
by Kutsushita-Socks
Summary: It is never a lifetime's worth. Collection of Ritsu/Soubi drabbles.
1. I

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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My Way Home Is Through You – My Chemical Romance

The best thing would be to lose himself in this. So thought Soubi as another line of pain slashed up his spine, the feeling delayed for a few seconds after he heard the crack of the whip (so he _knew _it was coming-)

Ritsu's touch was cold on his burning skin, and he jerked rigid as his teacher's hands caressed the wounds on his back. Soubi clung to Ritsu because Ritsu was all he had, and Ritsu had shaped him into who he was.

He sank to the floor and gave up on trying.


	2. II

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**Sophomore Slump Or Comeback Of The Year – Fall Out Boy**

"He ruined you, Soubi-kun." Ritsu's face was unreadable as he leant against his office wall, his head framed by a halo of dead butterflies in glass cases.

"That's –"

"You're deluding yourself. You wanted to be mine, didn't you, Soubi-kun?"

No reply. Soubi sat very still in the low chair by Ritsu's desk, letting the disapproving tones in his former teacher's voice sink into his skin. _Keep blaming me, _he thought. _Tell me it's my fault._

"You wanted _me _to write my name, but you settled for Seimei. And you grew attached to him… Loyal, as I taught you to be."

He wondered how Ritsu managed to know everything about him, always.

"And now he's dead, you're lost. Give in, Soubi-kun, and come back to me."

He looked up and his eyes were wide.


	3. III

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**Folkin' Around – Panic! At The Disco**

Soubi hadn't lied. There had certainly been times when Ritsu was "kind" to him.

Once, when Soubi was seven, Ritsu had taken him out into the school grounds to look at the baby birds nesting in the oak tree outside. Soubi had stood there in silence for a few moments and stared at the tangle of twigs, and then Ritsu had announced, "their mother was killed by a cat yesterday. They're going to starve to death."

They had turned around and walked back inside. Soubi peered back over his shoulder and pretended he could hear the birds crying.


	4. IV

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**For All These Times – Lostprophets**

_I don't love or hate him. I just have no one else._

"Soubi-kun," Ritsu would whisper, pressing himself into Soubi's bare back and wrapping arms around his waist, "you'll never forget me."

And Soubi never did.


	5. V

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**New Born – Muse**

"Relax, Soubi-kun," Ritsu says as he pulls out the knife. Soubi is not relaxed. Soubi wants to stay _away _from this man and his pain, the pain that makes him shiver and squirm but that he finds strangely alluring – and it's not like this is the first time Ritsu has pulled a knife on him, but Soubi feels like any more will make him lose control.

He heard a story once about _the straw that broke the camel's back._

His will to fight back is being drained; it splatters onto the office floor along with his blood and his sweat. In this room all is silent except for the _drip _and his heartbeats, and he hears them getting faster.


	6. VI

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**Golden – Fall Out Boy**

You don't argue, you don't fight, you don't answer back. These are the rules, though he can't remember ever being told them.

Maybe if he follows the rules, he will know what to do. And maybe he needs someone to enforce them. And maybe he wants it to hurt.


	7. VII

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off – Panic! At The Disco [**for me, this is the ultimate Ritsu/Soubi song, and I didn't do it justice at ALL in any way. It needs at the least a well-written oneshot…**]**

Soubi lay on his side, alone in his apartment, his fingers clutching the sheets and his eyelids screwed up. Seimei's knife wounds were painful, but he was thinking about Ritsu. _Did sensei treat me better than Seimei? Did sensei… care about me more than Seimei?_

A rush of images hit him – the crack of Ritsu's leather whip, the glint of a computer screen off Ritsu's glasses, a butterfly pinned in a box, Ritsu's hands everywhere-

He felt sick. That memory hadn't surfaced for months, hadn't even touched his mind, but… Soubi's gaze strayed to the cell phone on his desk, and in his mind he was already dialling.

_I could call him._

_But I won't._


	8. VIII

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**9th Revolver – Alice Nine**

By all means, he should be happy when he's allowed into lessons with the other students. But their chatter makes him feel uncomfortable, and there are so _many _of them he feels claustrophobic.

It's only been an hour before he returns to Ritsu. His teacher doesn't look up as Soubi enters the room, simply pointing to the pile of books on the side of his desk, and smiling very slightly as he does so.

_You intended this all along, _he realises, and he's almost shocked at the total control this man holds over him.


	9. IX

**This group of drabbles was written for a meme on LiveJournal. The rules are to turn on your iPod/MP3, pick the first 9 songs and write a drabble for each of them inside the time frame for the song. You're not allowed to go on writing after the song has finished, which is why there's some very short pieces and some VERY shoddy writing in here.**

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**Homecoming/The Death Of St Jimmy – Green Day**

Today it was flowers. The vibrant red of his brushstrokes was so bright it seemed to pulse on the canvas, a stark contrast to the dull grey of the desk and the walls and the sky behind the windowpanes.

Soubi raised his hand, holding his brush like a scalpel, and breathed a stem, a bud, a petal. A light wash became a sky marred by stormclouds; spots of white were dew beads lingering on the edge of leaves. A landscape swam into being beneath his hand, and for a moment he experienced the rush where he is the one _to control, _and not the one _to be controlled – _and then last night's bruises throbbed and he winced, rubbing gingerly at his collarbone beneath his shirt.

When he next put brush to canvas he did it carefully; deliberately, but he seemed almost insecure as he marked the curve of a wing and sketched a trail of movement.

Back to painting butterflies.

And on the other side of Soubi's world, Ritsu sat slightly slumped in his chair, staring out of the window as the first autumnal beads of rain rolled down the glass, clinging to leaves and flowers which shivered as a chill wind blew through the school grounds.

The milky sunlight glinted off his glasses and reflected back onto the wings of a pinned butterfly in a case above his desk. For a heartbeat they seemed to shift or to flutter; then Ritsu turned his head back to the computer screen, and the illusion was broken, leaving the room deathly still and shrouded in a silence that was punctuated only by the erratic tapping of the keyboard.

Ritsu remembered that, once, this room would have echoed with the crack of a whip, and he sighed.


End file.
